In many fields of technology physical, chemical and other quantities are to be detected or monitored for different reasons. To detect these quantities, sensors may be used. A location, where these quantities are detected, differs often from a location, where the corresponding data are collected, pre-processed or processed. As a consequence, sensor-related data are transmitted from a sensor to a unit, where the data are at least collected.
While in the many fields of technology and applications, sensor-related data may be transmitted from the sensor to the other unit using highly sophisticated transmission schemes, a tendency exists to simplify the infrastructure used for transmitting these data. In at least some of these fields and applications, comparably rough operating conditions may be present, causing for instance disturbances in the transmissions of the sensors. However, also under these more difficult operational conditions, the availability of the related data may be important or even crucial for operating a machine or a system.
While highly sophisticated transmission schemes including their infrastructures may be capable of operating a sensor even under more severe operational conditions, a tendency exists to simplify an implementation of the infrastructure necessary to transmit sensor-related data from the sensors to a control unit or the like. For instance, the availability of shielding, available space, computational power, energy consumption and other boundary conditions may be limited. Nevertheless, a robust operation of such a system, a simple implementation or architecture and a robust protocol for transmitting data may be desirable. At the same time, a desire exists to increase a bandwidth or an available through-put of data via the resulting infrastructure to be able to provide a large amount of sensor-related data to the other unit and/or to couple as many sensors as possible to the other unit.
For instance, in the field of high volume architectures and low cost implementations, finding a solution to this challenge may be more relevant than in other fields of technology. For instance, sensor-related applications in motorized or non-motorized vehicles may be subjected to a large variety of tough operating conditions and a large number of distortions of different kinds. For instance, distortions may come from electric impulses used to operate systems of the vehicle, which may capacitively or inductively couple into a transmission link used to transmit data from such a sensor to another unit. The situation may further be aggravated by environmental conditions, which may lead to a signal degradation, for instance due to large variations of the temperature or an influence of water. Furthermore, such an infrastructure may be subjected to mechanical stress including, for instance, shocks and vibrations.
Although, in the case of electrical systems and signal transmission schemes, these influences may be more significant than in other transmission schemes, similar challenges do not only arise when using electrical signals, but also using magnetic signals, optical signals or other signals to transmit or exchange data. Moreover, also in other fields of technology, comparable situations may exist including non-high volume architectures and/or non-low cost applications.